Recycled Imaginations, Re*source, and the One According to Ikhwan Al-Safa

This chapter starts from the conviction that literary sources are nexuses in long chains of other recycled sources. No source exists alone. An epistemological source is a product of a complex process of reading, rereading, writing, rewriting, adaptation, and readaptation. In this process of source recycling, the author adds to her/his own text new cultural, historical, or political perspectives, as well as fresh imageries, motifs, and symbolisms. Nevertheless, authors may not be consciously aware of where their imaginations/sources stem from. Here, the concept of the Re*source comes into play. The West’s underestimation of the epistemological contributions of the East hinders a sustainable understanding of not only the West’s own epistemological history but also of all humanity’s history. Lori Humphrey Newcomb, in her essay “Toward a Sustainable Source Study” (2018), called for a sustainable source study. Borrowing the ecosystem term of sustainability evokes the ramifications that sources should be regarded as naturally recyclable. Accordingly, the ever-flowing human fountain of imagination and inspiration must not be discontinued for the sake of a superior hegemonic West at the expense of a deemed inferior East. The one human literary and cultural corpus itself contains endless multiplicities of creative formations, hence Ikhwan Al-Safa’s Al-Aql Al-Kuli. Some of the trans*textual literary examples given in this chapter are based on the research results of my book Trans*textual Shakespeare the Arabic and Persian Pretexts of Romeo and Juliet (2020).